Zenit St. Petersburg v Spartak Moscow Betting Tips

This match sees the two most exciting sides in the Russian Premier League face off. Both of these teams no doubt have championship ambitions and whoever wins this match will have laid down a real marker.

Zenit managed to recover from their 2-2 draw against Anzhi (in which they were 2-0 up) by thrashing AZ Alkmaar 5-0 in the Europa League on Thursday night. The 2008 UEFA Cup champions did not put a foot wrong all night and caused the Dutch side problems from start to finish. Not only that, when Mirceu Lucescu’s team lost the ball, they were so quick to press Alkmaar and win it back in the opposition third. It was no doubt the best all-round performance from Zenit in a long time and more displays like this will make other Europa League teams incredibly wary of the former Russian champions.

Whilst they did not concede, perhaps the only concern for Lucescu was a couple of cheap one-on-one chances given away by sloppily gifting possession back to AZ in the Zenit half. Luckily for the Russian side, AZ were incredibly wasteful with these chances but they would have been punished against better opposition – such as Spartak.

Summer signing Giuliano has been an excellent acquisition and has been a more than adequate replacement for Hulk (whose number 7 shirt he also wears). The Brazilian is currently the joint second top goalscorer in the Russian Premier League with five goals (tied with Spartak’s Quincy Promes) and has six goals in his last seven matches for his new team. You could see the confidence running through the 26-year-old’s veins on Thursday night as he produced a beautiful dummy in the lead up to Aleksandr Kokorin’s first goal before crossing a brilliant ball for Kokorin to finish for his second of the night.

Not to be left off the score sheet, the former Dnipro player showed great goalscoring instinct to follow up a saved shot from Artem Dzyuba.

Although this match against Spartak will be a tougher test for Zenit I would still expect Giuliano to do well. The odds on him to score are very profitable at 9/4 – ridiculous when you consider the form he is in.

Spartak Moscow had been riding the winning waves until last week when they lost to relegation-threatened Ufa at home. Of course it is difficult to break down a side so set in their defensive ways like Ufa, but a team with Spartak’s quality in forward areas should be scoring at least once. It will be interesting to see how Massimo Carrera’s team recover from this and whether they can regain their confidence for a tough trip to the Petrovsky.

As with Krasnodar, there were calls of Spartak challenging for the title. Krasnodar fell short once these calls started being made so this match against a championship rival is incredibly important for Spartak. Real title challengers recover quickly from setbacks, however, given the Red-Whites’ reputation for bottling it, I am not sure they will be able to do this against Zenit.

As mentioned earlier, Quincy Promes is the joint second top goalscorer in the Russian Premier League and is undoubtedly Spartak’s biggest threat. Whilst Carrera’s side have plenty of other good players, you get the feeling that if Promes can be stopped then Spartak lose at least 50% of their quality – such is his importance to the way they play.

Overall I would have to back Zenit here, although Spartak will likely cause them problems. With this in mind I would go for a Zenit win and Over 2.5 match goals to be scored.

To see more tips click here.